Quiet Day at Work

If it's quiet in the office today, that's only because most of the people who work there were out on the street half the day, protesting the Mayor's bargaining position on a new contract for city workers. It looks like City Hall is asking for unpaid furlough days, unpaid vacation, continuing the hiring freeze and asking for employees to pay more for health insurance. The remaining work force is very upset about this. They feel like they deserve some credit for improving quality of life and city services, and will need an adequate and well motivated work force to keep things moving. But if the Mayor had listened to these small-minded bureaucrats, he would have balanced the city budget or hired new teachers rather than building a shiny new park that he can brag about on his many long and unexplained trips to Paris. These union workers just don't understand the glory and honor such a cool tourist attraction brings to the city, especially when it features a giant mirrored jellybean.
They didn't even like the Mayor's brilliant stroke of defacing a war monument to build a new stadium entirely for the benefit of a private organization, perhaps the worst football franchise the world has ever known. So these greedy union types obviously have the wrong priorities and lack the vision of our Mayor Daley. And anyway, he's raising taxes as much as he can and the mean governor won't let him have a casino.

Of course, some among you may wonder whether City Hall just wants to weaken the public sector unions in order to bring back the politically hired "temporary workers" who used to make up the bulk of city workers before the Shankman consent decree forced the city to hire people who could do the work, rather than as a reward for getting out the vote for the machine. To which I gotta say, that whole thing is ridiculous, just bogus. There was never any tit for tat, city workers just appreciated what a great job mayors like old man Daley, Bilandic and Jane Byrne used to do in bringing everyone together and making this such a happy, harmonious city back in the 70's and 80's. But what do I know, I don't even work here, I'm just a lowly contract worker. So, like . . . you're gonna vote for Daley, right?